La Bul

I had a great evening at La Bul in Bari, Italy, opting for the chef's surprise tasting menu. The food, while very good, lacked that wow factor—creative and fresh, yet missing the mark on creating lasting memories. The wine selection, featuring many local options, was a strong point, but the service, while pleasant, didn't quite reach the level of excellence found in comparable fine dining establishments.

La Bul is a Michlene style restaurant when you choose a pre-made course (5 or 7 portions). I chose 5, and I liked everything (except the calamry black ink portion). The place itself is nothing special, but this is usually the case with Michlene (style) restaurants. If you're into good food and reasonable pricing (again, comparing to a 1-star Michelene type restaurant), don't miss LA Bul!

Great food and presentation with good wine pairings. A lot of American clientele though, which impacted the atmosphere somewhat but unrelated to restaurant itself.

Perfect place to taste the gourmet cuisine. Easy to reach and very comfortable. Very friendly service and deep knowledge of the dishes.

The five of us dined here on Friday evening, the 26th. We were seated in the enclosed patio at the back of the restaurant which was rather hot because it is not ventilated in any way. I find it quite difficult dining in 27-28 degrees without even a fan cooling us off. The interior dinning room was empty, but there was no AC on. The menu had three choices of multi-course menus, 4, 5 and 8. But none of them listed a choice of dishes, meaning you would not know what will be served. This is highly unusual in my experience. Sure, one could be the “chef’s choice menu” but the other ones should give you some choices, such as a fish or meat main course. So, we ordered from the a-la-carte menu. Service overall was very slow, even though only 3-4 tables were occupied. It was in particular difficult to have them serve us the white and red wines that we had ordered and some of us often sat there with empty glasses while food was in front of us. Since you leave bottles of water at the table, you might as well leave the bottles of wine there as well if you are unable to serve it appropriately along with the food. Everyone but myself ordered just a main while I also had the smoked fish appetizer. It was good, maybe a bit heavy on the smoke. Two of us had the seafood risotto. There didn’t appear to be any pieces of fish or shrimp in the red sauce that the rice was cooked in. It was very salty and tasted entirely of a stock made by boiling the shells of shrimp. So, basically not edible and a cheap approach to making a fish stock. They replaced those two servings with a fish dish that was agreeable. One of us had the duck dish which was fine, even though the duck was over-cooked. I had the veal sweetbreads which tasted rather strongly, so, maybe not from veal but an older cow. And I have had sweetbreads on many occasions, so, I know the difference. So, don’t be fooled by the Michelin recommendation. This restaurant doesn’t live up to it by any means.

Really good experience and reasonable price. Main dish was the best of all. Interesting wine pairing.

The food here (I had the 4 course tasting menu) was creative (without being crazy), with wonderful tastes (both contrasting and complementary), beautifully prepared and presented. I dined alone (a female of a certain age, who sometimes gets shunted off into an inconspicuous corner-but not here), and was treated very nicely. I definitely recommend this for a special occasion, including just wanting to enjoy the creativity with local ingredients.

Exceptional dinner! The food was wonderful and the service was excellent. They were very attentive.